"Sharp, quirky, and occasionally nettlesome", Walking the Berkshires is my personal blog, an eclectic weaving of human narrative, natural history, and other personal passions with the Berkshire and Litchfield Hills as both its backdrop and point of departure. I am interested in how land and people, past and present manifest in the broader landscape and social fabric of our communities. The opinions I express here are mine alone. Never had ads, never will.

March 24, 2008

Verisimilitude

I am writing an historical novel based on the premise that the American Revolution failed to win American Independence. In some ways this is harder than writing about events as they actually played out, for to deviate convincingly down an alternate historical path requires getting so much of the actual history right. It is also a fascinating exercise to consider that the birth of the United States was neither inevitable nor a million-to-one shot, but an outcome that had much to do with contingency, risk, and choices made wisely or wrongly by great and small on both sides of the Atlantic.

My plausible contingency - the one that tilts the outcome of the war in a different direction - takes place at Trenton. To me it was this victory, and a week later the stolen march and audacious attack on the British rearguard at Princeton, that even more than Saratoga marked a true turning point in the war. Washington is the linchpin, for he alone among the American commanders was able to keep a fractious army from breaking into its disparate parts as enlistments ended, and so I must deny the colonies his services. The battle must not end with nearly 1000 Hessian prisoners and not one patriot combatant killed of the field of battle, but with the loss of the American commander and an outcome that guarantees that New Jersey, lower New York and Rhode Island remain under British occupation and the war becomes a prolonged irregular insurgency, even more internecine than it was in fact.

That's the background of the story. I weave historical personages and fictional characters into this setting and let the narrative play out against this alternate backdrop. Hessian Colonel Johann Rall gets to play Pontius Pilate at Trenton. Benedict Arnold gets another shot at glory. Washington's mulatto manservant William Lee has a new career after the fall of the General and it is not the role of the faithful retainer for which this most famous of Revolutionary-era slaves is remembered. Several of my ancestors provide fodder for the character development of my fictional protagonists. My heroine is inspired by the author of this 1779 letter from our family archives and she has an odyssey worthy of Ullyses. The Founding Fathers? Some find a gibbet, and some are sent to penal servitude in West Florida. Some come back to their allegiance and some go underground with the "Sons of Terror", as the Sons of Liberty were known to the British and Hessian occupation forces.

I've worked out a number of "reconstruction" scenarios for an occupation and counter insurgency under British hardliners rather than the moderate Howes. All the Colonial charters are revoked. The Quebec Act of 1774 remains in place, as does the permeable Proclamation Line of 1763. The Iroquois League remains intact and holds its home territory in central and western New York. An exodus reminiscent of the Acadian diaspora depopulates patriot strongholds, the deportees replaced by Tories and Hessian farmers. And the other European powers bide their time and wait for the opportunity to strike at British interests as they strive to win the occupation after defeating the rebel armies in the field.

It might be tempting to draw parallels between this scenario and current events, but I did not set out to make that point. I am, however, lead to the conclusion that the British would have found the countryside and frontier difficult to hold from their garrison towns and the blockaded coastline. As long as the rebellion remained alive in what is now called "asymmetrical" war, Britain would not have the resources to crush it as they had the the Irish and the the Jacobites a generation before.

Asking "What if" about the Revolution is newly furrowed ground and much less commonly encountered in historical fiction than "Lost Cause" fantasies. If there were no successful American War of Independence, would there have been a French Revolution, or a Napoleon? Would America have expanded from sea to shining sea, or shared this continent with many other nations? And what would it mean to be an American then? I can imagine a Battle of New Orleans in which Lord Wellington and the 60th Royal American rifles fight alongside their colonial American countrymen to dislodge another great power from Louisiana. I can imagine a Civil War that takes place not in 1861 but in 1834 when Great Britian abolished slavery throughout the Empire, and John Calhoun leading proto-confederate "voortrekkers" on a fillibuster into Mexico. I'm about 50 pages into my alternate history of the American Revolution and already I can tell I'm writing a series...

Comments

I disagree about the French Declaration not being written. The writings of the Founding Fathers, as well as Thomas Paine's works and Lafayette's enthusiasm's, would still have an effect on the French national conscious. What these would eventually evolve towards is another question.

But it becomes entirely possible that, in opposition to a very strong British Atlantic Empire, the French adopt Revolutionary democratic principles and become the leading light for Enlightened Liberalism throughout the world.

Its also possible that the US has much more of an Australian character as the British stock the Colonies with banished criminals whilst Australia itself is a French, or other European, possession [Dutch?].

Interesting idea. I think that Washington was closer to dying at Princeton. Legend has it that a British shrpshooter had Washington in his sights but was stopped by his officer.

A couple of thoughts.
1. If the American revolution failed, the high sounding words of the Declaration of Independnece would have been treated as so much bracadiccio. The French Declaration of the Rights of Man would most likely not have been written and there would have been no French revolution as we know it. Along these lines;
2. Few people remeber that the Spanish and their rather decrepit monarchy actually owned what we know as the "Louisiana Purchase." The French and Napoleon installed a puppet regime who deeded the territory to France. If there was no French Revolution, Spain would have retained all of this territory, which includes the land the U.S. "acquired" from Mexico. "New England" would have stopped at the Mississippi River. Other than an interest in locating gold and supporting the search for gold, my readings of history indicate that Spain had no real interest in developing her colonies or populating them. That would have left the "American West" pretty barren. Again, along these lines
3. The european nations really weren't into colonization for colonization's sake. Using africa or india as models, it appears to me that the europeans prefered to set up trading centers, which grew into cities, set up territorial capitals to enforce national law among the natives (so as to keep the trade following and keep the peace) and to set up military garrisons at strategic points to protect the traders and trade routes as well as keep the other european nations out. As I see it, europe wasn't interested in large population migrations to the new colonies with an eye to "taming" the land for widespread use for farming or settlement. Maybe this would have changed as medical advances increased population pressures internally. One must ask though, if the U.S., had not existed, and North America remained undeveloped, would England, France, or Spain allowed the wide spread immigrations of Irish, Italians, Poles, Jews, Swedes and Norwegians, Russians, and even Hispanics, that so shaped the U.S.? What would have happened to those people? Would they have looked at Africa? Austrailia? India was are ready populated.
4. Don't underestimate the coming of the railroads as a key to the expansion of the U.S. It opened the "Great Grass Sea", as the Great Plains were called. The railroads allowed for the exploitation and settlement of land away from water-borne transport which was necessary to move goods and people. Finally(I know, this took off on me)
5. Don't overlook the European approach to native populations. They tended to allow tribes to remain on the land unless the tribe opposed the crown. The British set up trading centers and let the indians alone as long as they acknowledged British authority, traded goods, and didn't cooperate with foreign powers. In India, the British set up the Raj, but did not displace the local populace so much as co-opt them. (And replace the scattered principalities with a united rule) It is doubtful, that without large scale migration, that the British Army would have been as active against the native people as the U.S.Army. It was only during periods of revolt and nativist attempts to re-assert their control, e.g. in India or the Zulu wars that the foreign armies saw major actions. Otherwise, the RCMP could show the flag or keep the peace.
6. Finally (and this time I mean it), I think its important to recognize the "Safety Valve" affect that the U.S., has had on europe. In the 1800's and 1900's, when people got antsy, disaffected, unhappy or felt impoverished, they would board the boat for "America" What would these people do without this hope for a better life? Maybe Marx and his ilk would have been right.

I would start by researching other British colonies of the era, particularly ones that had failed "mutinies" of their own. I’ve always been impressed with B. Arnold, would he have turned his coat twice, and be thought a traitor to each side? Would the British have stripped the rebels of property, branded them and chased them off into the Western Wilderness to starve and die?

As for manufacturing, the British as I recall were not keen at all of the colonies developing any kind of industry, keeping them shackled to the Empire with finished goods. What I can see is smart Yankees copying/improving/forging British equipment and claiming it was imported. (complete with forged paperwork)

Would Federalism be strengthened or weakened in an eventual successful revolution that took several decades? Or would it be discredited totally if unsuccessful?

Also remember that if not for the French, we would have most likely lost even with Washington. As a conservative, it hurt to say that, but it is true.

One warning: Novels take bloody well forever, devour time, and have an insanely high failure rate around lottery ticket percentages. Alternate History novels are even worse, because you actually have to reflect authentic history. (spoken as a budding fantasy novelist, with a trilogy in process for nearly 20 years now and no end in sight. And fantasy is easier, because you can just make stuff up :) Good luck, and I’ll buy a copy to go with my Turtledove collection.

Wow! Talk about ambition... good luck with this project. I know from writing two novellas myself how daunting a task writing a novel is. My own were historical fiction that took some liberties with actual events but certainly didn't deviate on the scale you're tackling. I wish you all the best and look forward to hearing more about your novel as your work progresses.

What an interesting task you've outlined. Yes, it will require a multi-volume set to cover such a possibility. Certainly the geo-political lines would be vastly different under such a scenario --- and with an earlier abolishment of slavery, what about Texas? The Republic of Texas might have expanded to gobble up most of the Old South and as a new nation would have given the British a run for their money. Just an idea.

Obviously there is enough here to keep you out of Fotomarts forever!
TERRY

And this, of course, is the fun of changing one key event in history; the ripples get ever wider and the surface more distorted with time. It is by no means a given after the American Insurrection that the course of empire would proceed on a recognizable trajectory. The whole question of markets and capital becomes a crucial one, for instance. Would the industrial Revolution have played out in colonial British North American at the turn of the 19th century as dramatically as it did when we were a young nation that required its own manufacturing base? Would the northern American colonies confined to a territory East of the Allegenies have witherred, while Canada with the upper Mississippi and the Old Northwest become a greater presense? Would the center of western expansion have focussed on the "safety valve" of the frontier in southern colonies and conflicts with Spain, the Cherokee and perhaps other European powers? At what point would we have become a self-ruling nation under the British Commonwealth and would we have been content, like Canada, to remain so?

Ideas most welcome. It is an importnat backstory to explore even if I don't pick it up until book 2...

Here's another question: If the British had retained North America intact, would the center of gravity of the Empire been entirely different? One can imagine that the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Northern America would have such a vast internal market that capital, ships, and capital ships would have travelled west rather than south and east to Africa and India. Here's another one: With so many North American constituents, would William Wilberforce and Charles Fox have carried the day and passed the Slave Trade Act through Parliament? Without the decision of the British to abolish the slave trade and enforce the abolition with the Royal Navy, what would have happened?